Breaking news, on the 1912 Presidential Election! The establishment G.O.P. Party Machinery, having chosen current President William Howard Taft as 1912 Republican nominee for the White House, in spite of the larger following amongst the Party, and the people generally, for former President Theodore Roosevelt, T.R. has decided to break with the Republican establishment, and form a new political party — the Progressive Party, labeled soon after as the Bull Moose Party! Because, after all, how would cartoonists parody them, without an animal mascot?!

Above, a German view of American events, in the publication Kladderadatsch, posing whether Teddy has taken A Juicy Bite — Or More Than He Could Chew?

Below, William Kemp Starrett on the birth of “The Grand New Party” — The Teddy Bear Party — to the personal glory of Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy’s parade is complete with defecting Party Machine Bosses, ex-Republican Presidents, and the switching of sides of a few monopolies/trusts. Beneath that, Bromstrup of the San Francisco Post, and Charles Bowers, depict the Republican “Bolt” — i.e., the huge number G.O.P. delegates, who walked out of the Republican Convention, calling for the formation of a new political party.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

Click on the above & below cartoons, to enlarge them, and view them in greater detail.

Beneath, with art by Dan Napoli, an insurance ad for World War I soldiers and their families, run in Uncle Sam’s Regulars on the Rhine, issue 5. I’m not quite certain whether this booklet was published during the war, or slightly after, but it’s one of the earlier titles amongst pamphlets sold by disabled & unemployed WW I veterans, to help support themselves.

The above & beneath cartoons come from separate issues of the unemployed WW I veterans’ pamphlet sereies, titled My Buddie Boy Wit and Goodwill In and Out of Hospital. The above is from the rear cover of issue 4, while below is from the rear cover of an unnumbered issue. A black & white version of the same beneath art, was used as the front cover on another pamphlet.

Above, Life in a Big Hospital, from inside another unemployed & disabled WW I veterans booklet — Doughboys’ Fun and Facts In and Out of Service.

While below, from Uncle Sam’s Regulars on the Rhine number 5, artist Jimmy Meehan depicts a wealthy war profiteer, who wants an unemployed veteran removed from his sight before he feels too much sympathy for him.

Since our conservative activist Supreme Court has in so many recent rulings sought to return the U.S. to pre-Teddy Roosevelt 19th century Robber Barons days, I felt it appropriate to throw in a few early 19th century cartoons, when the rich truly behaved as royalty, ruling the masses with wealth, and the power they purchased it with.

The above & below images come from the third issue of the American Scraps, self-published in 1832 by artist David Claypoole Johnston. In “The Test of Friendship” above, the “test” is the righteousness of not helping a friend get up; below, Claypoole’s version of “A Fit of the Blue Devils” (being sick), obviously “inspired” (ahem) by a very similar, earlier Cruikshank cartoon.

Finally, below, the first three panels from artist William Heath‘s serialized series, Essay on Modern Medical Education. The series (along with several others) ran in Heath’s cartoon sheet publication, Glasgow Looking Glass. These panels are from issue Six, August 18th, 1825. Since I’ve now begun the series, I guess I should continue it — just as I’m sure the Health Care debate in this country, will continue.

For today, a potpourri from the June 1912 edition of Cartoons Magazine, on the wonders of our modern age! (Minus, roughly, a century…)

Above, by John T. McCutcheon, The New Neighbors, having their belongings transported by a modern moving van with spoke-wheeled tires, rather than the traditional horse-and-wagon. Note also, the very latest in musical players!

Below, by Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling, a comparison of the antiquated method of keeping one’s foodstuff cool, versus the modern convenience of today’s icebox, whereby you keep your food in a wooden cabinet, “powered” by placing a large block of ice inside it daily…

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

Above, the joys of Going Green, with everyone having their own backyard food garden, by Ole May, Frank Michael Spangler, Frederick Townsend, and more.

Beneath, Fontaine Fox, William Charles Morris, and a couple other civic-minded cartoonists, encouraging the latest techniques for fighting epidemics and disease! Of course, we all know that the other side regards this as socialist government control of our lives — dictating to us all what to do with the flies that God Himself has blessed us with!

Click on the above & below pictures, to view them in detail, and read their captions.

Hopkins was recruited away from his native U.S. to move to Australia, and become a regular contributor to the weekly humor paper, Sydney Bulletin. In an effort to determine if Hopkins might have continued to produce Professor Tigwissel episodes in Australia, I searched the first several years of the Sydney Bulletin. While I found no new Tigwissel episodes, I did find instances in which Hopkins drew characters which looked remarkably like Tigwissel, but were neither scientists, nor had the character’s name. Below, in A Little Hint to Contributors , Livingston Hopkins depicts an editor about to release a bulldog upon a poet, who is approaching the editor with a pile of his work. From May 19th, 1883, this is amongst the earliest of Hopkins’ cartoons published in the Bulletin.

Beneath, we find Parts One & Two of The Boogeebung Boomerang, appearing together in the March 15th, 1884 edition of the Sydney Bulletin. A comparison of it to Hopkins’ Tigwissel episode of eight years prior, shows that Hopkins re-used the art from that prior episode for his new Australian audience, who likely never saw the NYC-published original. Hopkins recycled his own Daily Graphic work for re-use in the Sydney Bulletin on several other occasionsdid this on other occasions — click here to view how yet another Tigwissel episode was altered for replay to his Australian audience. In The Boogeebung Boomerang below, Hopkins has slightly re-arranged the order of panels in the story, plus changed the accompanying text.

The Professor’s tenth adventure will appear here, in two weeks. Meanwhile, you can click on Tigwissel Tuesdays to view prior episodes in this series.

From June 1912 — back in the days when baseball actually was “America’s Favorite Pastime”, and a favorite topic of America’s cartoonists — come the following Cartoons Magazine extracts. My usual “and others” for contributions by lesser cartoonists not being tracked, does not even appear today, as all the contributors are stars.

Above left, kids keeping hold of the integrity of baseball, against the adults (right), who in 1912 were embroiled in the scandal of fixed games. Warning against gambling in the sport, is Boardman Robinson, while spotlighting the kids’s view, are James H. Donahey, A.B. Chapin, and Robert Ripley, six years before his first Believe It or Not!. This is Ripley’s first appearance in Cartoons Magazine. Of possible interest is the title of the cartoon positioned next to Ripley’s — “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction”. Any chance that this might have been a subtle seed-planting moment, as the young Robert Ripley, early in his career, undoubtedly looked upon the page of his first appearance collected amongst so many other fellow cartoonists, including the one placed next to his?

Below, the Winter Coal Trust replaced with the Summer Ice Trust, in a cartoon by Billy Ireland, using baseball to take a swing at monopolies. Beneath that — slipping in here because I didn’t pay enough attention to separate this page’s cartoons by subject — is another cartoon on rigged commodity markets, this time by Frank Michael Spangler.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

Here’s an interesting oddity, a early 60′s issue of Huckleberry Hound Weekly from the UK. Previously I’ve expressed my love for the output of the Hanna-Barbara Studio in general and Huck in particular. So it was a genuine pleasure seeing this random issue full of some really nice art (which I’m going to go ahead and assume was done by Hanna-Barbara artists for the international market). Most of their major players from around 1963 are here including some now fairly obscure ones like Touche Turtle and Loopy de Loop.

It’s kind of funny, in a sad, cheap-jack, the way the British editors desperately tried to turn this into the “Easter issue” mostly through the strength of pasting typewritten text (!) over Huck’s word balloon on the cover. Too cheap to spring for lettering…that’s just how cheap British comics could get.